Imagine the Outcry if Stafford Had Been A Private Hospital

6 Feb 2013 at 13:54

I’ve spent the last 90 minutes watching the Prime Minister’s statement on the Francis Report into the terrible goings on at Stafford Hospital. What was allowed to happen there was terrible, and an indictment of all those who sat by and watched this catastrophe developing. Let’s not beat around the bush, this happened because the system allowed it to happen. The NHS is far too obsessed with back-watching, targets and bureaucracy rather than being obsessed with the quality of patient care. Others far more qualified than me will comment on the wider implications of what happened there, but let me leave you with one thought.

Can you imagine the outcry if this had happened at a private hospital? There would be calls for the modern day equivalent of public lynchings and the profit motive would be blamed. This was a massive public sector failure. Typically, the NHS regulators failed. The GMC failed to dismiss anyone. Most of the people there were moved or promoted to other senior jobs in the NHS. An utter disgrace.

You have to remember that Labour actually ran a "We Love the NHS" campaign in absolutely full knowledge of MidStaffs and other similar disasters. And that part of the reason the horrors were not stopped by the CQC was that they were told by the Labour government that they didn't want embarrassing stories in the run up to the next (2010) election. That was said by a senior CQC official during the evidence to the Francis enquiry. Remember all those great Moral Outrage speeches we've heard from Ed Miliband about bankers, predatory capitalism and the rest? Have we heard one outraged speech from him about the fact that over 1200 innocent vulnerable people died needlessly at Mid Staffs? We have not. And who put the regulatory boss Cynthia Bower in charge of CQC nationally (with disastrous results) as a promotion from her appalling failures in her job as the "we never noticed anything, it didn't register on our radar" regulatory boss responsible for Mid Staffs during the time of the greatest horrors and huge death rates? Why, Gordon Brown and his mates. I wonder what political party Cynthia Bower might have been a member of?